slkinsey

I understand your point, Mitch. And, as I said, I'd prefer lots of cracked black pepper as well. But while the lack of cracked black pepper may have made the dish less authentic, it was nevertheless very good. Landmarc isn't presenting itself as an Italian restaurant or one that strives for slavish duplication of regional cuisines, so I'm less inclined to be a purist than I might be if I had the same dish at, e.g., Celeste. As for cooking dry pasta correctly: My experience is that few restaurants of any kind do it well, regardless of whether they offer lots of pasta dishes... and this goes for many of the ostensibly Italian ones. Landmarc, on the other hand, is not an Italian restaurant, and their menu doesn't feature a lot of pasta dishes. At most restaurants, this would translate into even lower expectations of expertise in pasta cookery, and I wouldn't be likely to order pasta. To return to an earlier example I made in this thread, I wouldn't necessarily expect French Roast to give me properly al dente dry pasta. This is a moot point, however, since Landmarc seems to have a good handle on cooking dry pasta to a good texture.

Well, the choice between PJ Clarke's/Josefina/O'Neals/Fiorello and Landmarc is a no-brainer IMO. When I spoke of French Roast, I was more speaking of places like French Roast than French Roast in particular. But, just to make an example, if I'm standing on 72nd and Broadway and I can either go uptown 13 blocks to French Roast or downtown 13 blocks to Landmarc, I'm going downtown. At least in my experience, 13 blocks is reasonably within what I would consider "neighborhood restaurant area" (which is to say that I'll walk 13 blocks for a quick bite without thinking too hard about it). Edited to add: There's a Steve Cuozzo writeup in the Post.

Looks like he's doing this: http://www.delpedro.com

One of Phil Ward's cocktails was recently featured in "Shaken & Stirred" in the NY Times: The Oaxaca Old-Fashioned 1.5 oz : El Tesoro Reposado tequila 0.5 oz : Los Amantes Joven mezcal 1 tsp : amber agave nectar 1 : dash Angostura bitters Orange twist Shake with ice and strain into an ice-filled rocks glass. Garnish with flamed orange twist.

Compass has also gone through so many chefs and so many incarnations, and for a while seemed to be booked around 50% of the time for private parties, that I think they've lost a good bit of confidence from UWS locals. I should also point out that there's a significant difference in price point, which is very important to UWS customers. Check out their dinner menu. The least expensive entre is 24 bucks, the median seems to be around 29, and it goes up all the way to 45! Landmarc's dinner menu, on the other hand, has small pasta dishes and hamburgers in the 10 to 13 dollar range, and even the most expensive choice on the menu, the ribeye steak, is only 34 dollars. When you consider that Compass has wine by the glass at prices comparable to Landmarc's half-bottle prices, a dinner there will very likely be twice what you would pay at Landmarc. When you think about it, Landmarc's UWS competition is going to be places like French Roast. This place is packed most of the time, and has a similar price point. Now, personally, I can't imagine someone who wouldn't rather go to Landmarc than French Roast.

Rich, where/how did you order the bottles? I googled "Norma Kalani" to see if I could find a picture of the bottles, and came up with a big goose egg.

I assume it must have to do with the price of copper. Consider what, say, All-Clad is charging for interior clad aluminum pans (their MasterChef line) and the fact that copper is more than twice as expensive. My experience is that prices for heavy copper cookware have gone up, but they haven't doubled in the last 10 years. In 1999 I was citing list prices of $580 and deep discount prices of $410 for Bourgeat's eleven-inch "flared saute pan." Then what happened (in my opinion) is that Falk Culinair entered the market and rationalized the prices of stainless lined heavy copper in the US. At the same time in 1999, I noted list prices of $399 for Falk's eleven-inch "sauciere" (same type of pan) and normal sale prices of $338. Eventually, I believe the US distributors of Bouregeat and Mauviel had to reduce their prices in order to compete with Falk Culinair. Today, Falk's eleven-inch sauciere lists at $375 without the cover, and $485 with the cover. I should point out that buying a fancy copper/stainless bimetal cover is a complete waste of money when you can get a perfectly good stainless cover for 20 bucks, but I believe the 1999 prices all included the cover so that would be the appropriate apples-to-apples comparison. Understanding that, we're looking at something like a 22% increase in the price of an eleven-inch stainless lined heavy copper sauteuse evasee with a fancy bimetal cover over 8 years. That's not nothing, of course, but I wonder how that tracks the rise in the price of copper over the same period.

So... just for kicks, I measured a few of my pans and compared them. I have a Falk Culinair "low casserole" that looks like this. It has a diameter of 9.5 inches. I also have an heavy antique Griswold cast iron skillet with a diameter of 10.25 inches. Both weigh 4 pounds, 15.25 ounces (2,247 grams) on my kitchen scale. That would give the cast iron pan a thermal capacity of 1,009 and the copper pan a thermal capacity of 865. 144 may seem like a significant difference, but really isn't when you consider that a cast aluminum pan of the same weight would have a thermal capacity of 2,164 (that would be a significant difference). Without using calipers, the cast iron pan and the copper pan appear to have approximately the same thickness. If anything, the cast iron pan is a little thinner. The larger-diameter cast iron pan has lower sides, which explains why they weigh the same. Here's the thing: I use these two pans all the time, and I can tell you with 100% certainty that the copper pan heats up and cools down significantly more rapidly than the cast iron pan. Since the thermal capacity is very similar, this difference is explained entirely by the large difference in thermal conductivity. I also have a smaller diameter cast iron pan, which has a smaller thermal capacity than the copper pan. It, also, is slower to heat up and cool down compared to the copper pan.

So... I was at Landmarc for a quick bite yesterday evening, where I was pleased to run into both Sneakeater and Daniel, who I hope will contribute their own reactions. They appear to be firing on all cylinders in the kitchen. Their foie gras terrine is still a ridiculous bargain and warm snail salad is a new favorite (I have no idea why I waited so long to try it). We shared a big plate of the Tuesday pasta, spaghetti alla carbonara, which was properly sauced and nicely al dente (which is no mean feat for a restaurant that only features one pasta dish). Ideally, I would have liked some cracked black pepper with the pasta, which as an Italophile I consider an important part of spaghetti alla carbonara, but this is a fairly minor quibble. There is now "a little bit of Ditch Plains" on the menu in the form of raw clams and oysters, and the possibility of choosing littleneck clams with one of five sauces in addition to the mussels their menu has always featured. The wine list has some very nice new additions, and the value remains tremendous. We had half bottles of falanghina, aglianico and prosecco, all delicious and none costing more than 16 bucks. We had 2 appetizers, one large pasta, three half-bottles of wine and a cheese plate. We left full and a little tipsy, completely satisfied and even feeling like we had splurged a bit. Yet in the end, the tab was a little less than 60 bucks a person (including tax, but not the tip). The service is good but lags behind the kitchen maybe a little bit. I assume this will pull together quickly as they have a bit more practice. All the signs are there: they have experience, they want to do a good job, they're enthusiastic and they all clearly want to be there. The one thing that, in my mind, has distinguished Landmarc's FOH since my second visit was also there: We were recognized, greeted warmly and received as friends. Both owners, the wine director and a few other managers we knew from TriBeCa stopped by our table for a quick chat, and we've already made friends with the new FOH people at the TWC location. This, in my mind, is the keystone to their repeat-business success as a neighborhood restaurant. I don't know anyone doing it any better.

We should also consider the fact that cocktails 50+ years ago were very much smaller than they are today.

This should be largely dependant on the size of the water bath. I've been using a 5 gallon stock pot for mine, and I can't think that a couple of frozen strip steaks will drop the temperature all that much. And, of course, the temperature of the water bath isn't as important as the temperature of the food. Presumably the water bath will come up to temperature long before the steaks. Joe: Why not "pre-freeze" the steaks a little, hit the exterior with a blowtorch, bag and freeze, go directly from the freezer into the water bath for cooking, and then do a finish sear (potentially also with a blowtorch)?

Exactly. I suppose I'm less enthusiastic about it (although, of course, I may go anyway) because a) I am in Texas and North Carolina multiple times a year, and b) I've already been to the last 4 BABBP events. If I were a first timer who didn't already have pretty regular access to excellent Q, I might feel differently. But, realistically, let's figure one Bubba Fast Pass and two people waiting in different VIP lines coordinating by telephone. Let's further assume that these two people aren't interested in buying barbecue from any of the NYC establishments. That leaves about 8 pits they might like to try. We're talking, then, about paying a hundred bucks to wait in line for something like 3 hours per person (this does not include time spent actually eating the food). Or, of course, they could wait in line together for 45 minutes and spend their hundred bucks at Mitchell's -- which wouldn't be a bad plan.

That's a misunderstanding on your part, I'm afraid -- at least in the context of the materials use in cookware. Obviously, one can reach a point where thermal mass becomes so great that it overcomes the advantages of thermal conductivity and restricts responsiveness -- but these conditions aren't generally found in cookware. Yes, it's true that responsiveness and thermal mass are always opposed when thermal conductivity is the same. For example, a 2.5 mm thick copper pan will be more responsive than a 5 mm copper pan, and this difference in responsiveness is largely explained by the difference in thermal mass. However, in comparing iron to copper, the thermal conductivity is not the same. Not only is the thermal conductivity not the same, it's radically different. Think of it this way: If you have two Toyota Corollas, and one weighs 2,500 pounds and the other weighs 3,200 pounds, the lighter Corolla will be quicker to speed up and slow down. If, on the other hand, you take a 3,200 pound Ferrari F430, I think we all understand that the Ferrari will be quicker to speed up and slow down than the same weight of Toyota. In this example, weight is like thermal mass and engine power is like thermal conductivity. In terms of thermal capacity, it's simple math. Take a cast iron skillet and a copper pan of similar thermal capacity. Heck, take a copper pan with a larger thermal capacity -- use one that weighs a little more than the cast iron pan. Heat them up on the stove. See which one takes longer to heat up and which one takes longer to cool down. If you do this experiment (which I've done) you'll see that, despite having an equivalent-or-larger thermal capacity, the copper pan is still much more responsive. As a friend was just saying to me, it's possible to understand that you can empty out a barrel faster than a bottle of the hole in the barrel is big enough. This goes directly to the "heat faucet" examples in my eGCI class. Anyway... I hope this makes more sense. If you've read "much more rigorous analyses" of cookware materials, please provide a link or a reference. I'd certainly be interested in reading them.

Am I the only person who's a little "over" the BABBP? I'd absolutely be up for going down there again if I had any sense that I'd be able to buy a Bubba Pass and not have to wait in interminable lines -- but even the VIP side was clogged up last year. And, as much as I love barbecue, waiting in line for 45 minutes to get a plate of pulled pork is losing some of its allure. Granted, I don't entirely understand the economics of the thing, but the best the express side ever worked was the day the retail machines broke and they simply handed out food to anyone on that side who asked. Unless they predict that this would ruin the financials, I don't see why they don't do this again. There's no reason people who spend a hundred bucks for special access to express lines should have to wait more than 5 minutes for a plate of barbecue.

Read eGCI Class on cookware and all will be explained. In short: Yes, it is possible to be both responsive and to have a relatively high thermal capacity, so long as thermal conductivity is high enough. Yes, copper and iron have very similar thermal capacity by volume, and therefore copper and iron pans with similar thickness will have a similar thermal capacity. Yes, the reason iron pans take so much longer to heat up and cool down compared to copper pans of similar size and thickness is almost entirely explained by thermal conductivity. Yes, the main heat-related difference between iron and copper as they are deployed in cookware is conductivity. And, yes, this is a huge difference (4.01 W/cm/K for copper versus only 0.80 for iron).

fwiw, the Grimes review credits him with it. You mean this review? Doesn't seem that way to me. If he gives anyone credit, it seems to be Bastianich and Batali, but other than implying that he doesn't fully believe their schtick that "their way with raw fish is a venerable Italian tradition, indulged by humble fishermen up north along the Adriatic coast and down south from Naples to Sicily" he doesn't say much about who came up with the idea. And, to a certain extent, how could he have known when writing that review that crudo -- as executed and largely popularized by Pasternack at Esca -- would come to be such a popular culinary meme?

Excellent! They really deserve a re-review. It's interesting to me that Pasternack doesn't seem to get the credit he deserves for more or less "inventing" crudo (aka, Italian-style sashimi).

Often, yea. But it definitely has its drawbacks from a maintenance standpoint. In terms of performance, a nice extra-thick iron pan (either enamel clad or seasoned, depending on the application) would have an edge when it comes to cooking applications in which one would like to have constant, unchanging heat.

I don't think they have "officially opened" yet. I have the feeling this is the "soft opening" -- which, of course, is harder and harder to do in any meaningful way in today's era of eGullet, Chowhound, Eater, etc.

I was at their F&F, and won't say anything detailed since it was a shaking-out period. But I will say that we were very favorably impressed, and all signs point to continued high quality from the Landmarc crew. I think this will be the perfect combination of the quality UWSers crave (and which is in unfortunate short supply on the UWS) and the price point/value proposition UWSers are looking for.

It is true that iron has a higher specific heat than copper (specific heat being the amount of heat Joules it takes to raise one gram of a substance by one degree). I wouldn't say it's a big difference, however. Iron clocks in at 0.449 J/g/K versus 0.385 for copper. But copper is more dense than iron: 8.96 g/cm^3 versus 7.87 for iron. When you combine these to get specific heat per cubic centimeter, they are very similar in their thermal capacity: 3.53 J/cm^3/K for iron versus 3.44 for copper. This means that, if iron and copper pans have a similar thickness -- and most iron pans are unfortunately no more thick than heavy copper pans -- the heat capacity is just about the same. Having a relatively high thermal capacity is actually an advantage of copper. What makes it especially advantageous is that it is also extremely responsive. Think: freight train that can turn on a dime.

There's been a setback on the NYC bonded applejack front. Eber Bros. Wine & Liquor, the distributor carrying bonded applejack in NY, closed its warehouse in Guilderland on March 31 and is being purchased by the New York division of Southern Wine & Spirits. In New York, Charmer Industries, Inc/Empire Merchants, LLC carry regular blended Applejack. If we want bonded applejack to continue to be available in New York, pros should lean on their Charmer reps to stock bonded applejack, and customers should ask their favorite liquor stores to do the same.

The BTU (that's British Thermal Unit) can be described as the amount of thermal energy required to raise the temperature of one pound of water by one degree Fahrenheit. When speaking of cookware, one should properly say BTUs per hour. So, for example, a 1 BTU stove burner would be putting out the amount of thermal energy required raise the temperature of one pound of water by one degree Fahrenheit every hour. As Steven points out, it's a good measure of a stove burner's power, whereas temperature is not. For example, you may have an acetylene torch that burns at 1000F. That's a very high temperature. But it's also a small flame. It's not very many BTUs. If you're trying to boil 10 gallons of water, you're better off with a lower temperature burner but one that is much larger. What's the difference? The larger, lower temperature burner is pumping out way more BTUs than the smaller, higher temperature blowtorch. Ultimately, there is only so high the temperature can be on a commercial or residential natural gas stove. It's unlikely that the burner temperature on a Viking stove is meaningfully higher than it is on my Crapmaster 9000 NYC apartment stove. The difference is that the Viking burner is pumping out a lot more thermal energy, aka BTUs.

I wonder how the tin of Rösle's Boston shaker compares to industry standard? I've noticed that a lot of the strainers I've seen that look like the Rösle strainer are way too small.

I don't know! But I'd like to know. I predict that it will lead to a "less sticky" surface. One notes that modern cast iron seems to have a rough cooking surface, even when well-seasoned. Antique examples, however, tend to have a glass-smooth cooking surface. Most people, myself included, report better performance from the old stuff. But who knows, without trying it? Unfortunately, no one seems to he able to get their mitts on any.